Acts against the workplace: Social bonding and employee deviance

Abstract

Research into the phenomenon of workplace deviance has separately focused on two types of employee rule‐breaking behavior, 1) acts against the property and assets of the organization and 2) various types of counter‐productive behavior. In an attempt to compare the theoretical and empirical similarity of these two forms of employee deviance, this paper examines the self‐reported involvement in both property and production deviance among a population of employees randomly sampled from three industry sectors and three metropolitan areas. Utilizing a weighted least squares logit regression analysis, the findings support continued conceptual separation of these two forms of employee rule‐breaking as they seem to be explained by slightly different configurations of the “social bonding” model. Involvement in property deviance seems to be primarily the result of a lack of future “commitment” to the organization, while counter‐productive behavior is better understood using a combination of “commitment, attachment, and involvement” variables in the model. Further, both forms of workplace deviance were significantly more likely to involve younger employees.